6139008-History-of-Money

a commodity currency. "However, the coinage was still scarce as indicated by taxes being collected mainly in services andproduce, rather than coinage." And in the well-known fact that for centuries later, royal courts moved around from royaldomain to domain as they consumed the resources grown locally. All this indicated the crushing cost of trying to maintaina commodity money system when there were neither the precious metals nor skills and institutions available for that orthe alternate fiat currency." Zarlenga traces the different ways in which successive regimes exploited the discrepancybetween the gold-silver ratio in India and Europe. The Venetians learned to live with the Muslim conquest of the EasternMediterranean, by adapting their trading to the Muslim injunctions against the taking of interest. The Venetians replaced itwith profits by the Venetian financiers who shared with the active entrepreneurs the actual risks. But those profitsincluded the huge discrepancy in the gold-silver ratio between Europe and Asia. The basis for this collaboration was inEgypt which was kept isolated from the rest of the Muslim World. The Portuguese by discovering the route around theCape of Good Hope cut into Venice’s monopoly which had brought Italy the Renaissance and the European basis for thecollection of the ratio bonus shifted from Pavia to Antwerp. The European Jews came to play an increasing part incommunications across the ratio frontier. From Portugal it shifted to Holland, largely because of its prowess inshipbuilding. And from there to England. Then with the discovery of America, far cheaper sources of gold becameavailable.Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) was the original name of the modern city of Istanbul. Byzantium was originally settledby Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas. The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization ofthe original Thracian-Greek name Byzantion (Βυζάντιον). After siding with Pescennius Niger against the victoriousSeptimius Severus the city was besieged by Rome and suffered extensive damage in AD 196. Byzantium was rebuilt bythe now Roman Emperor Septimius Severus and quickly regained its previous prosperity. The location of Byzantiumattracted Constantine the Great who, in AD 330, refounded it as Nova Roma (New Rome) or Constantinoupolis(Constantinople, Greek Κωνσταντινούπολις) after a prophetic dream was said to have identified the location of the city.The East Roman Empire which had its capital in Constantinople from then until 1453 has often been called the ByzantineEmpire or Byzantium by modern scholars. By extension, the name Byzantium is often used to refer to the ByzantineEmpire, its territory, and its customs. The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the RomanEmpire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. In certain specific contexts, usually referring tothe centuries that marked the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it is also often referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire.There is no consensus on the starting date of the Byzantine period. Some place it during the reign of Diocletian (284-305)due to the administrative reforms he introduced, dividing the empire into a pars Orientis and a pars Occidentis. Othersplace it during the reign of Theodosius I (379-395) and “Christendom's triumph over paganism”, or, following his death in395, with the division of the empire into Western and Eastern halves. Others place it yet further in 476, when the lastwestern emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was forced to abdicate, thus leaving to the emperor in the Greek East soleimperial authority. In any case, the changeover was gradual and by 330, when Constantine the Great inaugurated his newcapital, the process of Hellenization and Christianization was well underway. There evolved a rift caused by the 9thcentury dispute between Romans (East Byzantines as we render them today) and Franks, who, under Charlemagne'snewly formed empire, and in concert with the Pope (West), attempted to legitimize their conquests by claiminginheritance of Roman rights in Italy thereby renouncing their eastern neighbors as true Romans. The Donation ofConstantine, one of the most famous forged documents in history, played a crucial role in this. Henceforth, it was fixedpolicy in the West to refer to the emperor in Constantinople not by the usual "Imperator Romanorum" (Emperor of theRomans) which was now reserved for the Frankish monarch, but as "Imperator Graecorum" (Emperor of the Greeks) andthe land as "Imperium Graecorum", "Graecia", "Terra Graecorum" or even "Imperium Constantinopolitanus".Map of the Byzantine Empire around 550. Green indicates theconquests during the reign of Justinian I.In 1095 Pope Urban II passionately called for an expedition to takeJerusalem from the Muslims. ‘It is the will of God’ chanted themultitude, and every village in Europe was affected by this greatestundertaking of any kind since the time of Imperial Rome. "But after allMoslems had ruled Palestine for over 400 years. The Emperor askedfor help in retrieving the holy lands to remove the military pressurethe Seljuk Turks placed on Byzantium. At the time the larger part of the Jewish [actually Khazars] population had movedfrom Asia to Europe. The occupation of Spain by Islam had brought a wave of Jews with it. Much of the East-West tradewas in their hands through Spain. The massacre of Jews in Europe by Crusaders as they left on the first Crusade mayindicate that constricting the Jews was a motivation on more than one level. "But the Papacy also wanted to end thedominance of the Basileus Emperor in Constantinople which was apparently still recognized as the supremereligious authority by most of the Western leadership. Or if a large Western force could be moved nearConstantinople without raising alarm over the many years it would take to assemble, that force could ultimately be usedto topple the Emperor." All these high level objectives and more were in fact achieved during the Crusades. The Basileussucceeded in dislodging the Moslems from Jerusalem for almost 100 years and forever from Spain. The Mediterranean wasreopened to general Papal traffic. The significance of the Jews in international trade was ‘drastically reduced’ after theCrusades broke the Moslem-Christian barrier, breaking the trading links of the Jews in Europe with the Radanites of Egypt,who held long-standing trade relations with India. Many Crusaders were responsible for the massacres of the Jews. Theattacks were said to be religiously motivated in that anyone who accepted baptism was not harmed – for example all theJews of Trier. However, many massacres occurred elsewhere: in the Church at Rouen; at Speyer 800 Jews killed eachother to avoid baptism In Mainz, 1014 Jews similarly died together, and massacres occurred at Altenauhr, Xanten, Mors,Kerpen, Gelden and Cologne (James Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community, Hermon Press, New York, 1976).The Hidden History Of Money & New World Order Usury Secrets Revealed at last! Page 223